I fixed my high cholesterol problem with oats...
Months ago I replaced my daily dinner with a mix of oats + banana + protein powder + 1 tbsp olive oil + peanut butter + flaxseeds + oat milk - all mixed in a blender.
My bad cholesterol (LDL levels) tanked from 160 mg/dL to 91 mg/dL. My daily dinners before that were not even that unhealthy. Dropping sat fat intake had nowhere near that much effect for me.
For me and I assume for many others, lack soluble fibers are the root cause of high LDL levels.
So it appears oat fibers are just quite effective natural bile acid sequestrants[1]. That makes me wonder why don't we use this class of locally-acting compounds as first line cholesterol lowering treatment, instead going straight for the "bazooka" of systemic acting statins that have lots of side-effects, even affecting personality[2].
I've been doing something similar for breakfast, one cup of oatmeal + one cup of water and about two tablespoons of chia seeds, microwave for 2 minutes. Add a banana and some honey, top it with whole roasted almonds and some raspberries. It has been doing wonders for my digestion. I'll have to try to add olive oil as well.
My LDL was 150 last time I checked. I wonder what it is now since I've been doing this meal several times a week.
One of my most used appliances is a Tiger rice cooker with Porridge and timer function.
It's been used pretty much every day for 7+ years since I purchased it.
Every night I put 130g steel cut oats in, 400-420g of water, set it to cook for 45 mins and be ready for when I wake up in the morning. I'll then add 25g protein powder, sometimes a few berries or sprinkle with seeds/nuts. A nutritional power house.
I find steel cut oats more filling, a lot more substantial with ground oats more goopey. Steel cut oats are normally a hassle to cook but it's set and forget with the rice cooker. From what i've read I also believe the fact they sit soaking over night in water also is breaks down the starches which helps nutrient absorption.
Does wonders for digestion and satiety. Everything runs like clockwork with them. If I don't have them for a few days, things get irregular and a noticeable difference in satiety for the rest of the day where i end up snacking as feel hungry after meals.
Is there an added health or digestive benefit of fully soaking the oats, overnight or microwaved? Or is it just a matter of taste?
I just add some hot water and milk (indeed I'm not sure if what I have are plain or instant oats)
I've been doing this for a very long time but I use rolled oats and plain water (I drain the water completely before eating).
I eat soaked oats every day and always have a fresh bowl or two soaking in the fridge. They are still fine to eat even if they've been soaking for more than 24h.
I like the fact that they are more concentrated in terms of calories/nutrients per 100g than cooked oats and also provide steadier energy. I often pair them with a protein drink (pea protein + rice protein), a drizzle of avocado/olive oil, and berries. Takes just a few minutes to prepare.
This works well for rolled oats but not for steel cut. Both types are much nicer cooked in a pot with stirring to bring out the creaminess (like risotto).
I came up with a microwave steel cut oat method that worked well. Going from memory, I put the oats and hot water in a bowl in the microwave and set it for 45 seconds 100%, then 9 minutes at power level 2. One of those microwaves with "Cook 1" and "Cook 2" on it. The hot water I put in initially was basically boiling hot, you might need to do more time on cook 1 if you put in less hot water (at work we had one of those instant boiling water things).
Steel cut whole groats have really good nutrition. That tough brown skin is full of good stuff. I do mine in the pressure cooker for 20 mins with 1:1:3 oats:milk:water.
I also use a pressure cooker (instant pot) but it doesn't take nearly that long. 3 minutes on high, rest for 10 minutes, vent. I also use 1:3 oats:water and add a splash of half and half when I serve it. I'll usually do a batch of 1 cup oats, 3 cups water, two cut up apples, and a lot of cinnamon. That's four servings and I reheat the leftovers in a microwave with some additional water. I also like to add walnuts when I serve.
For steel-cut whole groats, the tough whole seeds cut in half width-ways? Mine would be crunchy and whole after just 3 mins. Even after 15 mins pressure they were a bit firm. Rolled I cook in 5 mins.
I'm using an instant pot. Maybe it develops more pressure? But 3 minutes high, rest for 10 minutes, vent, is just a bit on the al dente side. Cooked through, but slightly chewy.
Sometimes I sauté the dry oats in a pat of butter for a few minutes before adding the water and cooking. It gives them a nice nutty flavor.
Oat fiber. I've been taking 30g of oat fiber everyday for the past 3 years. Slugging it down in 8oz of warm water and 10g of nooch. Not only are my cholesterol levels fantastic after starting that regime, but very regular as well.
Blending reduces some of the effects of including soluble fibres - your stomach empties faster, blood sugar can spike more quickly (especially with fruit smoothies), and you lose some of the "scrubbing" action in the intestines.
While peanut butter does contain some useful nutrients, there are much better choices out there in case someone would like to further improve/optimize their nutrition. Many topics in nutrition can be quite debatable but IMHO most other nuts outperform peanuts (which aren't even nuts) in many ways. Furthermore I'd say peanuts aren't that useful as a protein source in this situation given that protein powder is already being added.
I recently discovered the world of nut butters, and usually choose them over whole nuts due to easier digestibility and nutrient availability. Unless I'm eating macadamia nuts which already feel quite easy on the gut.
Peanut butter is cheap and delicious. A lot of people hyper-optimising nutrition (I was one of them) tend to forget much more obvious stuff like fiber, amino-acid profiles, absorption of specific vitamins like D, etc.
It's definitely cheap and delicious, but I found that it actually started giving me breakouts on my forehead, especially around my brow line, when I started putting it in smoothies after training 4-5x per week. Switching over to using almond butter (or really just cheaper raw almonds since I'm blending anyways) made it go away.
But also high in fat and thus calories. Lower-grade brands also add in garbage like palm fat or sugar. But like with all things, it depends a lot on the quantities you consume and also what else you eat and drink.
Of course, but personally I find it hard to eat too much of a ‘nut’ butter. I did keto for some months and was, in fact, almost always nauseatingly full from all the fat.
Peanuts are an order of magnitude cheaper. Sometimes, if you buy a packet of "mixed nuts", you find the first three ingredients are three different types of peanut.
Peanut butter is much cheaper as nut butters are usually very expensive (at least here), but I agree, substituting peanut butter with tahini drastically improved my stomach/digestive issues.
Soluble fiber in general helps lower LDL, beans and lentils work well too. One caution for diabetics, this meal could be pretty high in carbs for a single sitting depending on portions.
you say "fixed" but have you asked "why" you think your cholesterol is broken and needs "fixed"?? why is your cholesterol broken? why is higher cholesterol numbers strictly associated with longer life? why is lower cholesterol numbers strictly associated with premature death? why do we think higher cholesterol numbers are bad when the worldwide data clearly shows higher numbers are healthier?
Likewise i switched my breakfast to oats around 3 years ago when my cholesterol was above the recommended high threshold and its been constantly in the higher end of the accetable range ever since. I would like it to be lower, but its much better than it used to be.
Interesting. I have almost the same smoothie every morning minus the banana and oats. Instead I use psyllium husks for fibre.
My cholesterol has been in range for years despite eating almost exclusively saturated fat since I'm in the keto camp. Just watched an interesting episode by Peter Attia and Layne Norton on seed oils which might shift my view on PUFAs a bit.
30 % of the population have genetic makeup such that they can smoke all their life and not increase their risk of lung cancer by much, yet it's deadly for the other 70% of the population.
Many many studies over many decades, reviewed and controlled for other factors have showed that consumption of saturated fat increases heart health issues leading to death in the majority of the population. Finland and Norway have reduced the number of CVD at the population level by educating and pushing for a reduction in sat fat. You are probably one of the few exception.
This, and the infamous seed oils are subject on which Attia has controversial opinions - he is not an expert on nutrition, nor an epidemiologist, but neither am I, so my advice would be to broaden your sources of information.
Having said this, is the thing about PUFA the results of the studies from Walter Willet? I've just watch Chris MacAskill (Viva Longevity on YouTube) talking about it, it seems that PUFA (fatty fish, walnuts, sunflower seed oil) has the most positive effect on triglycerides across the whole population, and beyond reducing saturated fat and increasing fiber intake.
People are just different. I always wonder how we should think about eating and health on a personal level.
I can eat McDonalds and still get perfect blood results. (I dont do that anymore). I have a friend who does not like any vegetables and fruits, he is fine. But also friends who just look at a bag of sweets and grow fat. Allergies and stomach health can be very specific.
Of course you do control a lot. But at the same time, it seems very individual. Maybe a chance for personal AI nutrition practice?
Not op but for breakfast I do 1/4 cup steel cut oats, 1 cup water, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp maple syrup, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, pinch of salt. Add a spoon of flax meal at the end. I sometimes add walnuts.
I wish I didn't need the maple syrup. Adjust to taste I guess. Doc says my cholesterol levels are immaculate.
The science around what fats are good or bad is so confusing I don't think we can say much about them with certainly, except that trans fats are probably bad. I lean towards "eat whole foods", but those can include anything from beef and coconut which are full of saturated fats, to fish and nuts which are full of polyunsaturated fats.
Limiting animal fats (which are mostly saturated fats) has a very noticeable and measurable effect on how I'm feeling and doing overall. Primarily using olive/avocado oil and nuts/seeds as my fat sources significantly improved my energy levels, mental clarity, sleep, and stress/HRV (as measured by my Garmin watch). I've noticed this so many times that I don't think this is a placebo. I haven't checked any specific blood markers that might be affected by dietary fats though.
Saturated fats _are_ essential for humans but you should be getting enough of them from non-animal sources.
I think that depends on the individual, or maybe on the dose. Years ago I read a bunch of books arguing for saturated fat, started eating a lot of it, and my cholesterol and triglycerides got horrifically bad. Even those books, which claimed high cholesterol is no big deal, were like "but if it goes over X then you need to fix that," and I was over X. I had high particle numbers too, which the books agreed was pretty bad. I went back to my normal diet and that took me back to my normal bloodwork.
My understanding is that the very few studies that showed positive impact of "adding" saturated fat turned out to be a replacement issue. They replaced junk (candy, refined carbs) with sat fat. Replacing with MUFA and PUFA showed a much greater effect.
Oats are a heavily sprayed crop as well (at least in the US). Glyphosate is also further sprayed on oats as a drying agent. Fortunately Costco sells a brand of glyphosate free oats in bulk.
China would like to have a word with you. Soy milk in particular is hugely popular for breakfast, and there's about a zillion other ways to eat it too.
It's well known that an oatmeal diet lowers cholesterol (the article itself cites a 1907 'oat cure' in its intro). The new finding here is insight into the exact mechanism- a short-term, high-dose oatmeal diet (300g/day for two days) had significantly greater LDL-lowering effect than a medium-term, moderate-dose oatmeal diet (80g/day for six weeks), and they associated the difference with increases in several plasma phenolic compounds triggered by specific changes in the gut microbiome.
I'm left wondering what happens if you feed people 300g/day of barley, shredded wheat, brown rice, or any other wholegrain. For that matter, what happens if you do the same thing with legumes?
The experiment halved energy intake at minimum and still provided 30+ grams of fibre then kept doing it until the gut emptied, which I reckon most people would expect to nuke and replace the gut microbiome, but did oatmeal have any specific advantage?
Their hypothesis for the mechanism is "gut bacteria" but these people in the study all had a trifecta of "high" body weight (overweight? obese? not specified in this article), high blood pressure, and hyperlipidemia.
So we've got some unhealthy people, we cut their calories to less than half, we jack their fiber way up (most likely - we don't know their baseline diet but with those biomarkers we can make some educated guesses), we restrict the timing of when they eat and remove all junk food.
So is this oatmeal specifically? Fiber? Calorie deficit? Meal timing effects? Removal of processed food for two days?
The idea that you can "shock" your body to better biomarkers like this and have it last over a month is extremely cool, but I wonder how they can be certain that this is some oatmeal thing versus a general "eat way less and limit yourself to a food that is high in fiber" thing.
The low protein here is a problem when in a calorie deficit, for example, because if you don't have enough protein you're likely to lose weight as muscle mass rather than fat. If you could do the same technique with legumes your protein would be way better.
The paper does a better job explaining why oats were chosen:
> Oats offer an interesting and promising approach for treating MetS due to their unique composition characterized by a high fiber content, especially β-glucan, essential minerals and vitamins, and various bioactive substances, including phenols which exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that may improve metabolic function. Furthermore, oats are an accessible and sustainable food item.
I eat Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats for breakfast every day; 1/2c dry is about 88g. That's a pretty decent meal. 3.5x that is probably most of what you eat that day.
Yeah, the article showed that the high-dose intervention (modeled after von Noorden's famous century-old 'oat cure') is most effective. A large bowl of oatmeal (100g) all 3 meals for 2 days, 6 large bowls total.
6 weeks of 'oatmeal for breakfast every day' was less effective than 2 days of 'stuff yourself with oatmeal'.
It's quite a bit of volume, but it's "only" about 1000 Calories if it doesn't have any oils/sugar added.
I'd guess the easiest way to get it down would be to just blend the oats into water without cooking so you have something that you can just drink like water.
They had a control group who also went on a reduced calorie deficit but without oats and found that the oats eating group had a much higher decrease of cholesterol, it's in the article.
I've always been wondering why buckwheat isn't more popular in western countries. It has a similar nutritional profile with high levels of fiber, vitamins and minerals. It's been a staple of my diet for many years as it never gets old thanks to a fantastic complex aroma and taste.
I don't even cook it, simply soaking it with water overnight in a refrigerator does the job. Preparation takes 2-3 minutes (except for the overnight soak). Not boiling it also saves all the vitamins.
1. When someone consumes fat, bile is released into the gut.
2. Oatmeal (and other soluble fibers like psyllium husk) capture this bile and it is excreted in stool.
3. In order to create the bile, the liver needs LDL. Because the LDL it used to create the bile was lost when it was captured, it exposes more LDL receptors and pulls LDL out of the bloodstream, thereby lowering LDL levels.
It seems to me that in order to maximize the effectiveness of this LDL-lowering approach, one must not simply consume psyllium or oatmeal, but rather consume them in conjunction with fat. Not saturated fat, obviously, which raises LDL, but perhaps unsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. My expectation is that this would trigger the bile secretion required in order to actually sequester it.
I make steel cut oats in the pressure cooker; you need to put some fat in there to stop it bubbling while it's cooking, so butter has a physical purpose there too. And also tastes delicious.
yes. It also keeps the pasta from sticking together as quickly after you drain it. But an Italian friend made a face and said "it will keep the sauce from adhering to the pasta!!!' so... yeah.
VLDL, a precursor for LDL, is produced in liver. Both are more or less the same chemically, but differ in the amount of fat carried. LDL is VLDL but somewhat processed by body, HDL is a VLDL (LDL) completely processed by body.
Bile is used to process food in the gut. It does not go back into our system. Bile is still produced by liver even in long fasts.
Oatmeals is a kind of elimination diet, much like carnivore diet or rice diet. The later one also lowered cholesterol.
What oatmeal diet really does is it completely eliminates essential fatty acids in food. These fatty acids are critical in VLDL production and, thusly, oatmeal diet reduces LDL levels through less production of VLDL.
I also think you're mischaracterizing HDL as a VLDL. If you search for Apolipoprotein A here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK305896/ you'll see that HDL is constructed from it, while VLDL and LDL are part of the Apolipoprotein B lineage.
Specifically: “ Although our pharmaceutical armamentarium is very good at the moment (the combination of statin-ezetimibe-proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 [PCSK9] can reduce LDL cholesterol [LDL-C] levels by 85%), new drugs are emerging through the different pitfalls of current drugs.”
It seems as if some researchers think that reducing this single metric without considering any other factors is inherently always a good thing and is very important.
Hardly “nothing else”. Two smoothies a day with 150g of oats blended in them will basically cover this. You’d still have plenty of room for other food.
But that's not what the study tested. The study showed that both calorie restriction, and calorie restriction combined with almost all calories from oats, reduced cholesterol; but that the effect was more durable for the latter case. No data was gathered on eating oats without calorie restriction in this study.
I was curious what the implementation looked like:
> In the short-term intervention study, participants assigned to the oat group (OG) consumed three oat meals daily for two days instead of their habitual Western diet. Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes (Demeterhof Schwab GmbH & Co. KG, Windsbach, Germany) boiled in water. To ascertain potential long-term effects, the two-day intervention period was followed by a six-week follow-up period during which the participants returned to their habitual diet without oats. Subjects assigned to the control group (CG) consumed three standardized control meals without oats on each intervention day, which were macronutrient-adapted to the OG, instead of their habitual Western diet.
> In the six-week intervention study, participants in the oat group (OG6w) replaced one habitual meal per day with an oatmeal comprising 80 × g of rolled oat flakes (Demeterhof Schwab GmbH & Co. KG), while maintaining their habitual Western diet. Participants in the corresponding control group (CG6w) maintained their habitual Western diet and remained abstinent from oats during the six-week study period according to the inclusion criteria.
This is pretty remarkable:
> Since cholesterol levels tended to remain below baseline during the six-week, oat-free follow-up period, persistent effects on lipid metabolism might be assumed (Fig. 3d). This assumption is further supported by the high compliance observed during the follow-up period, as all participants abstained from oat consumption and returned to their habitual Western diet, with no significant differences compared to their pre-study dietary patterns (Supplementary Data 2). Thus, our results indicate clearly that a high-dose oat diet improves lipid metabolism by decreasing serum TC and LDL-C levels, even after two days, which is consistent with the known cholesterol-lowering effect of oats. In addition, beneficial effects on anthropometrics and glucose metabolism were observed within each diet group (Supplementary Data 2), which we attribute to the diet-related calorie restriction.
I gotta say though, 100 grams of oats (three times a day) is a lot. That's over a cup (dry). A typical serving is less than half that (40 grams dry).
I prefer soybeans. They have more fiber (including more soluble fiber), and they have more protein.
I realized this when tracking micronutrients with an app (tracking every gram I put into my body), and realized my 600 calorie steel-cut-oats breakfast was often outdone by soybeans I'd eat later in the day. The soybeans had more fiber.
And I think they're easier to eat. It's pretty boring, but I microwave a bowl of frozen soybeans and then just eat them plain. They're clean, you could eat them with your fingers without causing a mess (I use a spoon though), and their cleanliness means I'm comfortable having a bowl next to me at the computer or wherever; if they spill I would just pick them up with my fingers and that's it.
I think that's an overblown concern that mainly applies to processed forms of soy like soy milk or tofu (I don't consume soy milk or tofu). It would be difficult to consume that much of the raw bean; we're probably talking hundreds of grams of fiber per day if you tried. I'm not certain though, do your own research.
Have you eaten edamame or mukimame? These strange names refer to young soy beans. You can buy them frozen. They're a pretty good snack food. I think they're the best of vegetables.
Oatmeal is amazing at stabilizing blood sugar levels. It's like adding inertia to the power grid.
If you are eating any kind of snack cracker or refined wheat product, I would suggest replacing with oats and then reporting back on results after one week.
I think the beneficial effects are strong enough to completely offset the impact of things like occasional bowl of ice cream and package of nerds gummy clusters. This is what gets me to power through. If there wasn't some kind of strong upside no one would be eating this stuff willingly.
If I eat a wheat-based breakfast (eg toast or wheat flakes), it's almost guaranteed that by 11am I'll be feeling fairly weak due to low blood sugar. Eating oats for breakfast doesn't have that effect at all.
I don't like oatmeal (porridge), but whole oats in muesli are pretty good.
> If there wasn't some kind of strong upside no one would be eating this stuff willingly.
Are you kidding? I love the stuff. I used to eat it daily as a kid and had gotten out of the habit, but when I had high cholesterol and my doctor told me to eat a lot of it, it was like being prescribed a treat.
Ice cream / milk has saturated fat, which is something that people who are watching their cholesterol might want to limit. Fat helps slow digestion, which is beneficial for the glycemic index. It depends on the ice cream too. Steel cut and rolled oats' glycemic load is not that bad, especially when eaten with berries, nuts, etc.
Also, using ice cream as the benchmark is misleading, as people might view it as a junk food and think that its glycemic index is higher than they otherwise would, but actually its glycemic index is low/moderate, depending on the type.
"Oatmeal" is a very confusing word to me because it's not actually "meal" (meaning "flour" in this case). There is actually a flour made out of oats, but it's not what you would make porridge out of.
Flour as you know it is not quite the same thing as meal milled at the time when the words were being invented. Wheatmeal is still a thing, look up images of it and the resemblance to oatmeal should be a lot more apparent!
I would class porridge oats as what might be called 'rolled oats' if you were buying animal feed. They are not ground, but crushed under a rolling stone. I guess they have different terms for different markets. Never seen rolled wheat, but I have seen rolled barley and oats.. they looks like porridge oats. Or is it an Atlantic divide, but with the US foodie term crossing back in the food market
I suppose I should acknowledge there is a big world out there. If I asked for porridge in the UK I would get oat porridge. The product I bought this morning to make it was called 'porridge oats'.I suspect the Asian version comes from the age of empire with British troops applying their home terms to their rations? 'This gloopy river thing looks like Porridge'.
A porridge made of rice in the UK is not a thing as far as I am aware (I'm not in hipster London though), I suspect it would be what we call Rice Pudding?
Thanks , I found it after clicking through to the actual nature paper, where it’s a detail buried deep down in the paper. They really should have mentioned it up front.
The trial was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Diabetes Association (DDG), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Cereal Processing, Milling and Starch Industries’ Association (VGMS), and RASO Naturprodukte."
I'd be quite suspicious of this study for this reason alone.
"They also lost two kilos in weight on average and their blood pressure fell slightly."
Two kilos in two days?
Edit: Oatmeal is great. I have some most mornings, either as porridge or letting it soak for a bit in "viscous mesophilic fermented milk", as Wikipedia suggests it can be called in english. Lots of starch but it takes a while for it to sugar the blood, and some fiber and protein.
2 kilograms is about the upper bound of the expected daily weight variability of an adult, caused by water retention and food intake. It's the difference between what you see if you weigh yourself after taking a morning dump vs. after dinner. That's why people are advised to weigh themselves at the same time every day.
(For purposes of weight loss, normies are also advised to weigh themselves weekly instead of daily, because it's easier than explaining to them what a low-pass filer is.)
2kg in 2 days doesn't sound unreasonable at all. Glycogen and water loss from the calorie restriction will do that, along with maybe better bowel regularity from the fiber. Nobody is claiming they lost 2kg of body fat.
If switching to oatmeal, go with the unflavored raw oats. It's not bad once a person gets used to it. Substituting milk with water is also perfectly fine.
Eating a low sugar breakfast does feel pretty healthy.
I much prefer the texture of porridge made in a pan on the stove to that made in the microwave. The stirring releases the starches from the oats.
I use rolled oats and cook with just salt and water which avoids the risk of the milk burning if you are inattentive, then add milk or yoghurt (and raw brown sugar) to my bowl.
As someone who grew up eating oatmeal for breakfast... that sounds really disgusting.
Don't get me wrong, to each their own, if you like it that's great, but way too liquidly oatmeal plus oil just sounds really disgusting compared to just normal oatmeal + normal amounts of water.
The study is suggesting two days of intense oats. You can go totally without protein for two days and barely notice it as long as you're keeping yourself full, and a big pile of oats does a surprisingly good job of that.
With just the oats it's hard. What I do is ferment my own greek yogurt (milk and starter in an instant pot for 9h, then strain it in the fridge overnight) and eat that with müsli mixed in (the German kind that's nothing but whole grains and some raisins, not the garbage that's basically breakfast cereal). Tastes great and gives you a ton of slow-release energy and protein.
Try assuming that the target audience for this research is clinicians and nutritionists working with general population patients - particularly patients who really need cholesterol-reducing interventions. The medical system has limited resources; patients have limited attention spans and compliance curves. The patient may be in your ER or hospital after a medical incident, or in your clinic after a bad test result. If the hospital kitchen, a family member, or the patient himself can get through two days of this relatively easy oatmeal diet, the research say that his short-term and intermediate-term numbers should (X fingers) improve by [details]. If, two real-world days later, both a follow-up cholesterol test and (hopefully) the patient's daily symptoms and perception of his health are greatly improved - that's a clear win, both for him and for the medical system. And (hopefully) the patient's perception of the medical system - because high cholesterol is a chronic health problem, and you need him to readily seek care, show up for appointments, and comply with prescribed treatments.
I think the main thing is to understand why oatmeal works: soluble fiber and the gut bacteria feeding on the carbs.
That can be achieved within many other diets too. I wish they were more specific in saying what's special about oats, if anything.
I also get upset when I see a ton of junk options at the grocery store. They are talking about plain cut oats and whole fresh fruit, but based on the way shelves are stocked I imagine a majority of people get the kind with all the added sugar. You might as well be eating honey smacks at that point. Yogurt has the same problem at the store.
Hold on there. High fiber consumption increases the excretion of cholesterol, by reducing the reabsorption of the cholesterol in bile. The liver produces cholesterol for bile, which mixes with our food in the duodenum and aids absorption of fats. Most of this cholesterol is then re-absorbed by the small intestines. By increasing bulk, fiber reduces the amount that is re-absorbed.
Effects on but biome are real too, and apparently beneficial, and may factor in, but it isn't the only (or necessarily the primary) mechanism for reducing serum cholesterol.
As a single guy, I just cook the oats in the bowl that I intend to serve them in and, since it's basically water just water in the base of the instant pot, there's not much cleaning required. The oats cook without manual intervention during the cooking process.
It takes a bit of time, but in theory you could set up your instant pot on a delay timer and wake up to freshly-cooked steel-cut oats.
That’s nothing. You should have seen me on my Halo Top ice cream only diet. One point of the ice cream, nothing else. Lost way more weight than these losers. Halo Top, guys, it’s the key.
Yea it’s on the oatmeal boxes even. Part of what’s interesting about this study though is they claim this two day intensive(300g per day) oatmeal diet showed microbiome changes which persist for months.
Yeah for reference 54 grams is about 200 kcal, so this is 1200 kcal or so of just oats. That leaves 600-800 kcal for other food if you’re targeting 1800-2000 kcal/day which is a reasonable calorie restriction. So this isn’t really a sustainable diet in the long term.
Which is why they are spreading the 300g out over an entire day, and it's the entire diet for 2 days.
The study is not suggesting this is a long-term diet. They're saying "eat oats for all your food for two days, and your cholesterol lowers by ~10% and then stays low for ~6 weeks due to changes in your gut biome".
They're not saying eat 300g for breakfast and then eat as normal. They're not saying do this every day.
They're saying 2 days, this is what you eat, spread out to replace all your meals across those 2 days, then go back to normal.
That wouldn't really make sense since amount of water could vary. Anyway the article says "Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes... boiled in water."
People go too hard, you really just need to drink 1 tsp ground up and boiled in a drink. It aggressively gels with water so it's best consumed like it was historically as a "small beer", with lot's of water.
The great thing about oatmeal is you can change the taste easily. Savory, sweet, spiced, aromatic, creamy, chewy, whatever you want.
My go-to is oatmeal with milk and pepper, but some days I want some aged cheddar, or smoked cheddar (mmmm!). Frozen wild blueberries/wineberries for a winter treat. Tumeric, ginger, cinnamon and honey if I'm getting sick. A fried egg and hot sauce if it's a lazy sunday.
It’s so funny you’re being downvoted, i think it’s just an expression of how much people hate oatmeal and like milk, lol. And also you can pry my milk from my cold dead hands.
Bah. I love putting a layer of frozen blueberries at the bottom of the bowl then layering on piping hot steel cut oats to thaw and warm them up. You’re probably right that I shouldn’t add dried cranberries and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup on top (occasionally with thinly sliced bananas) but I’m happy enough to be wrong about it. I also skip the milk.
You're missing out on up to two or three extra months of life by enjoying yourself now! I hope you think about that when you're too old to think about things!
It is a shame that most people's associations with oatmeal is either "bland" or "I've added in so much sugar that I may as well ignore the benefits of oats entirely".
Why no fruits? I eat oatmeal with milk, an apple and some flaxseed each morning. I don't care about the taste but I add the apple because of vitamins. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
I fixed my high cholesterol problem with oats... Months ago I replaced my daily dinner with a mix of oats + banana + protein powder + 1 tbsp olive oil + peanut butter + flaxseeds + oat milk - all mixed in a blender. My bad cholesterol (LDL levels) tanked from 160 mg/dL to 91 mg/dL. My daily dinners before that were not even that unhealthy. Dropping sat fat intake had nowhere near that much effect for me. For me and I assume for many others, lack soluble fibers are the root cause of high LDL levels.
So it appears oat fibers are just quite effective natural bile acid sequestrants[1]. That makes me wonder why don't we use this class of locally-acting compounds as first line cholesterol lowering treatment, instead going straight for the "bazooka" of systemic acting statins that have lots of side-effects, even affecting personality[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_acid_sequestrant
[2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200108-the-medications-...
I've been doing something similar for breakfast, one cup of oatmeal + one cup of water and about two tablespoons of chia seeds, microwave for 2 minutes. Add a banana and some honey, top it with whole roasted almonds and some raspberries. It has been doing wonders for my digestion. I'll have to try to add olive oil as well. My LDL was 150 last time I checked. I wonder what it is now since I've been doing this meal several times a week.
One of my most used appliances is a Tiger rice cooker with Porridge and timer function.
It's been used pretty much every day for 7+ years since I purchased it.
Every night I put 130g steel cut oats in, 400-420g of water, set it to cook for 45 mins and be ready for when I wake up in the morning. I'll then add 25g protein powder, sometimes a few berries or sprinkle with seeds/nuts. A nutritional power house.
I find steel cut oats more filling, a lot more substantial with ground oats more goopey. Steel cut oats are normally a hassle to cook but it's set and forget with the rice cooker. From what i've read I also believe the fact they sit soaking over night in water also is breaks down the starches which helps nutrient absorption.
Does wonders for digestion and satiety. Everything runs like clockwork with them. If I don't have them for a few days, things get irregular and a noticeable difference in satiety for the rest of the day where i end up snacking as feel hungry after meals.
You can skip the whole cooking part if you leave your oats and water mixed overnight!
Put your oats, portion of milk, some berries, cinnamon and honey in a container and leave it in the fridge overnight.
Do it now.
Come thank me tomorrow morning once you've tried it.
Is there an added health or digestive benefit of fully soaking the oats, overnight or microwaved? Or is it just a matter of taste? I just add some hot water and milk (indeed I'm not sure if what I have are plain or instant oats)
I've been doing this for a very long time but I use rolled oats and plain water (I drain the water completely before eating). I eat soaked oats every day and always have a fresh bowl or two soaking in the fridge. They are still fine to eat even if they've been soaking for more than 24h.
I like the fact that they are more concentrated in terms of calories/nutrients per 100g than cooked oats and also provide steadier energy. I often pair them with a protein drink (pea protein + rice protein), a drizzle of avocado/olive oil, and berries. Takes just a few minutes to prepare.
This works well for rolled oats but not for steel cut. Both types are much nicer cooked in a pot with stirring to bring out the creaminess (like risotto).
I came up with a microwave steel cut oat method that worked well. Going from memory, I put the oats and hot water in a bowl in the microwave and set it for 45 seconds 100%, then 9 minutes at power level 2. One of those microwaves with "Cook 1" and "Cook 2" on it. The hot water I put in initially was basically boiling hot, you might need to do more time on cook 1 if you put in less hot water (at work we had one of those instant boiling water things).
Damn, I just blast my oats until they threaten to overflow the bowl and call it a day. Does this technique unlock some creaminess or something unique?
Steel cut whole groats have really good nutrition. That tough brown skin is full of good stuff. I do mine in the pressure cooker for 20 mins with 1:1:3 oats:milk:water.
I also use a pressure cooker (instant pot) but it doesn't take nearly that long. 3 minutes on high, rest for 10 minutes, vent. I also use 1:3 oats:water and add a splash of half and half when I serve it. I'll usually do a batch of 1 cup oats, 3 cups water, two cut up apples, and a lot of cinnamon. That's four servings and I reheat the leftovers in a microwave with some additional water. I also like to add walnuts when I serve.
For steel-cut whole groats, the tough whole seeds cut in half width-ways? Mine would be crunchy and whole after just 3 mins. Even after 15 mins pressure they were a bit firm. Rolled I cook in 5 mins.
I only know one kind of steel cut whole oat:
https://mccanns.com/product/mccanns-traditional-steel-cut-ir...
I'm using an instant pot. Maybe it develops more pressure? But 3 minutes high, rest for 10 minutes, vent, is just a bit on the al dente side. Cooked through, but slightly chewy.
Sometimes I sauté the dry oats in a pat of butter for a few minutes before adding the water and cooking. It gives them a nice nutty flavor.
We're definitely talking about the same. Very interesting.
> Sometimes I sauté the dry oats in a pat of butter for a few minutes before adding the water and cooking. It gives them a nice nutty flavor.
Sounds great. It's the nuttiness from the skins I like about them compared to rolled.
Oat fiber. I've been taking 30g of oat fiber everyday for the past 3 years. Slugging it down in 8oz of warm water and 10g of nooch. Not only are my cholesterol levels fantastic after starting that regime, but very regular as well.
fiber is important but the unique cholesterol benefits from oats is around glucans esp. β-glucan
also found in mushrooms, rye, some fruits, pectin, etc.
oat fiber is fine but you'd probably see similar benefits from psyllium husks or other fiber sources.
> one cup of oatmeal + one cup of water
Do you need a knife and fork?
Add some walnuts. See my other comment for reasoning.
Blending reduces some of the effects of including soluble fibres - your stomach empties faster, blood sugar can spike more quickly (especially with fruit smoothies), and you lose some of the "scrubbing" action in the intestines.
> peanut butter
While peanut butter does contain some useful nutrients, there are much better choices out there in case someone would like to further improve/optimize their nutrition. Many topics in nutrition can be quite debatable but IMHO most other nuts outperform peanuts (which aren't even nuts) in many ways. Furthermore I'd say peanuts aren't that useful as a protein source in this situation given that protein powder is already being added.
I recently discovered the world of nut butters, and usually choose them over whole nuts due to easier digestibility and nutrient availability. Unless I'm eating macadamia nuts which already feel quite easy on the gut.
Peanut butter is cheap and delicious. A lot of people hyper-optimising nutrition (I was one of them) tend to forget much more obvious stuff like fiber, amino-acid profiles, absorption of specific vitamins like D, etc.
It's definitely cheap and delicious, but I found that it actually started giving me breakouts on my forehead, especially around my brow line, when I started putting it in smoothies after training 4-5x per week. Switching over to using almond butter (or really just cheaper raw almonds since I'm blending anyways) made it go away.
But also high in fat and thus calories. Lower-grade brands also add in garbage like palm fat or sugar. But like with all things, it depends a lot on the quantities you consume and also what else you eat and drink.
Of course, but personally I find it hard to eat too much of a ‘nut’ butter. I did keto for some months and was, in fact, almost always nauseatingly full from all the fat.
Interesting. I could eat PBJs all day long, if someone let me (and thank you to all the loving people who don't!)
The high fat is a benefit not a detriment.
Depends on the function you're trying to optimize.
Peanuts are an order of magnitude cheaper. Sometimes, if you buy a packet of "mixed nuts", you find the first three ingredients are three different types of peanut.
Being pedantic the only nuts we generally eat that are actually nuts are hazelnuts. The rest are seeds, drupes, or as in the case of peanuts legumes.
Chestnuts?
I added it for weight maintenance/gain (I'm close to underweight)
Peanut butter is much cheaper as nut butters are usually very expensive (at least here), but I agree, substituting peanut butter with tahini drastically improved my stomach/digestive issues.
Soluble fiber in general helps lower LDL, beans and lentils work well too. One caution for diabetics, this meal could be pretty high in carbs for a single sitting depending on portions.
you say "fixed" but have you asked "why" you think your cholesterol is broken and needs "fixed"?? why is your cholesterol broken? why is higher cholesterol numbers strictly associated with longer life? why is lower cholesterol numbers strictly associated with premature death? why do we think higher cholesterol numbers are bad when the worldwide data clearly shows higher numbers are healthier?
there are always layfolks who think they're smarter than the medical professionals
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/CIR.000000000000...
Likewise i switched my breakfast to oats around 3 years ago when my cholesterol was above the recommended high threshold and its been constantly in the higher end of the accetable range ever since. I would like it to be lower, but its much better than it used to be.
Interesting. I have almost the same smoothie every morning minus the banana and oats. Instead I use psyllium husks for fibre.
My cholesterol has been in range for years despite eating almost exclusively saturated fat since I'm in the keto camp. Just watched an interesting episode by Peter Attia and Layne Norton on seed oils which might shift my view on PUFAs a bit.
Thoughts?
30 % of the population have genetic makeup such that they can smoke all their life and not increase their risk of lung cancer by much, yet it's deadly for the other 70% of the population.
Many many studies over many decades, reviewed and controlled for other factors have showed that consumption of saturated fat increases heart health issues leading to death in the majority of the population. Finland and Norway have reduced the number of CVD at the population level by educating and pushing for a reduction in sat fat. You are probably one of the few exception.
This, and the infamous seed oils are subject on which Attia has controversial opinions - he is not an expert on nutrition, nor an epidemiologist, but neither am I, so my advice would be to broaden your sources of information.
Having said this, is the thing about PUFA the results of the studies from Walter Willet? I've just watch Chris MacAskill (Viva Longevity on YouTube) talking about it, it seems that PUFA (fatty fish, walnuts, sunflower seed oil) has the most positive effect on triglycerides across the whole population, and beyond reducing saturated fat and increasing fiber intake.
Not related to your question, but the lead levels in psyllium husks are too high for me to consume them daily.
People are just different. I always wonder how we should think about eating and health on a personal level.
I can eat McDonalds and still get perfect blood results. (I dont do that anymore). I have a friend who does not like any vegetables and fruits, he is fine. But also friends who just look at a bag of sweets and grow fat. Allergies and stomach health can be very specific.
Of course you do control a lot. But at the same time, it seems very individual. Maybe a chance for personal AI nutrition practice?
Can you be more specific with how you make it. Thanks!
Not op but for breakfast I do 1/4 cup steel cut oats, 1 cup water, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp maple syrup, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, pinch of salt. Add a spoon of flax meal at the end. I sometimes add walnuts.
I wish I didn't need the maple syrup. Adjust to taste I guess. Doc says my cholesterol levels are immaculate.
I did the same, my cholesterol was lower than ever. What I think it happens was that I increase my proteins intake as well as the muscle.
Do you cook the oats beforehand?
There's literally nothing wrong with saturated fat. Most polyunsaturated fats arelre problematic
The science around what fats are good or bad is so confusing I don't think we can say much about them with certainly, except that trans fats are probably bad. I lean towards "eat whole foods", but those can include anything from beef and coconut which are full of saturated fats, to fish and nuts which are full of polyunsaturated fats.
Limiting animal fats (which are mostly saturated fats) has a very noticeable and measurable effect on how I'm feeling and doing overall. Primarily using olive/avocado oil and nuts/seeds as my fat sources significantly improved my energy levels, mental clarity, sleep, and stress/HRV (as measured by my Garmin watch). I've noticed this so many times that I don't think this is a placebo. I haven't checked any specific blood markers that might be affected by dietary fats though.
Saturated fats _are_ essential for humans but you should be getting enough of them from non-animal sources.
YMMV
I think that depends on the individual, or maybe on the dose. Years ago I read a bunch of books arguing for saturated fat, started eating a lot of it, and my cholesterol and triglycerides got horrifically bad. Even those books, which claimed high cholesterol is no big deal, were like "but if it goes over X then you need to fix that," and I was over X. I had high particle numbers too, which the books agreed was pretty bad. I went back to my normal diet and that took me back to my normal bloodwork.
Citation Needed.
My understanding is that the very few studies that showed positive impact of "adding" saturated fat turned out to be a replacement issue. They replaced junk (candy, refined carbs) with sat fat. Replacing with MUFA and PUFA showed a much greater effect.
Soybeans have more fiber than oats. More soluble fiber too.
They’re also somewhat less flexible in terms of a yummy breakfast, more likely to be GMOs, and a heavily sprayed crop.
Oats are a heavily sprayed crop as well (at least in the US). Glyphosate is also further sprayed on oats as a drying agent. Fortunately Costco sells a brand of glyphosate free oats in bulk.
China would like to have a word with you. Soy milk in particular is hugely popular for breakfast, and there's about a zillion other ways to eat it too.
Does soy milk still have the fiber or is it like drinking fruit juice?
It's well known that an oatmeal diet lowers cholesterol (the article itself cites a 1907 'oat cure' in its intro). The new finding here is insight into the exact mechanism- a short-term, high-dose oatmeal diet (300g/day for two days) had significantly greater LDL-lowering effect than a medium-term, moderate-dose oatmeal diet (80g/day for six weeks), and they associated the difference with increases in several plasma phenolic compounds triggered by specific changes in the gut microbiome.
I'm left wondering what happens if you feed people 300g/day of barley, shredded wheat, brown rice, or any other wholegrain. For that matter, what happens if you do the same thing with legumes?
The experiment halved energy intake at minimum and still provided 30+ grams of fibre then kept doing it until the gut emptied, which I reckon most people would expect to nuke and replace the gut microbiome, but did oatmeal have any specific advantage?
Yeah this is a really wild experiment.
Their hypothesis for the mechanism is "gut bacteria" but these people in the study all had a trifecta of "high" body weight (overweight? obese? not specified in this article), high blood pressure, and hyperlipidemia.
So we've got some unhealthy people, we cut their calories to less than half, we jack their fiber way up (most likely - we don't know their baseline diet but with those biomarkers we can make some educated guesses), we restrict the timing of when they eat and remove all junk food.
So is this oatmeal specifically? Fiber? Calorie deficit? Meal timing effects? Removal of processed food for two days?
The idea that you can "shock" your body to better biomarkers like this and have it last over a month is extremely cool, but I wonder how they can be certain that this is some oatmeal thing versus a general "eat way less and limit yourself to a food that is high in fiber" thing.
The low protein here is a problem when in a calorie deficit, for example, because if you don't have enough protein you're likely to lose weight as muscle mass rather than fat. If you could do the same technique with legumes your protein would be way better.
> people in the study all had a trifecta
It's an intervention for people with metabolic syndrome, characterized specifically by those traits. Quoting the first sentence of the paper:
"Metabolic syndrome (MetS), characterized by the co-occurrence of central obesity, dyslipidemia, elevated blood pressure (BP), and dysglycemia, ..."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9
The paper does a better job explaining why oats were chosen:
> Oats offer an interesting and promising approach for treating MetS due to their unique composition characterized by a high fiber content, especially β-glucan, essential minerals and vitamins, and various bioactive substances, including phenols which exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that may improve metabolic function. Furthermore, oats are an accessible and sustainable food item.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9
What does the practical implementation of this look like? One 'oatmeal-day' a week ? Two?
Probably two days a month would suffice, given how long the beneficial effects are reported to last.
300g is a lot of oatmeal.
I eat Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats for breakfast every day; 1/2c dry is about 88g. That's a pretty decent meal. 3.5x that is probably most of what you eat that day.
Yeah, the article showed that the high-dose intervention (modeled after von Noorden's famous century-old 'oat cure') is most effective. A large bowl of oatmeal (100g) all 3 meals for 2 days, 6 large bowls total.
6 weeks of 'oatmeal for breakfast every day' was less effective than 2 days of 'stuff yourself with oatmeal'.
i mean we talkin cooked or uncooked?
88g dry may get much heavier after adding 3/4 cups water
It's quite a bit of volume, but it's "only" about 1000 Calories if it doesn't have any oils/sugar added.
I'd guess the easiest way to get it down would be to just blend the oats into water without cooking so you have something that you can just drink like water.
And this is the real reason.
The oatmeal put them on a crash diet of 1000 calories a day. And filled them so they didn’t reach for non reported snacks.
They had a control group who also went on a reduced calorie deficit but without oats and found that the oats eating group had a much higher decrease of cholesterol, it's in the article.
Two-day crash diet can reduce LDL levels for 6 weeks?
Part of the effect is caused by the heavy calorie restriction as the control group also saw LDL lowering but less.
Indeed they suggest that the difference may be due to changes in gut microbiome caused by oatmeal.
I've always been wondering why buckwheat isn't more popular in western countries. It has a similar nutritional profile with high levels of fiber, vitamins and minerals. It's been a staple of my diet for many years as it never gets old thanks to a fantastic complex aroma and taste.
I don't even cook it, simply soaking it with water overnight in a refrigerator does the job. Preparation takes 2-3 minutes (except for the overnight soak). Not boiling it also saves all the vitamins.
What are some ways that you prepare it post-soak?
My understanding is that:
1. When someone consumes fat, bile is released into the gut.
2. Oatmeal (and other soluble fibers like psyllium husk) capture this bile and it is excreted in stool.
3. In order to create the bile, the liver needs LDL. Because the LDL it used to create the bile was lost when it was captured, it exposes more LDL receptors and pulls LDL out of the bloodstream, thereby lowering LDL levels.
It seems to me that in order to maximize the effectiveness of this LDL-lowering approach, one must not simply consume psyllium or oatmeal, but rather consume them in conjunction with fat. Not saturated fat, obviously, which raises LDL, but perhaps unsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. My expectation is that this would trigger the bile secretion required in order to actually sequester it.
So, me putting butter on my oatmeal is not gross and decadent, but actually the new health food craze?
I make steel cut oats in the pressure cooker; you need to put some fat in there to stop it bubbling while it's cooking, so butter has a physical purpose there too. And also tastes delicious.
For those who haven't done much cooking - this bubble-busting trick works in a wide variety of situations. Very useful.
Some proteins seem to have a similar effect - but I haven't tried to narrow that down, and don't know the food science behind it.
Is this why my grandma put oil in the pasta pot?
yes. It also keeps the pasta from sticking together as quickly after you drain it. But an Italian friend made a face and said "it will keep the sauce from adhering to the pasta!!!' so... yeah.
That's to reduce the pasta sticking together as it cooks.
Not Strega Nona tho.
Nuts are also an option.
try sardines
Presumably you'd want something like olive or avocado oil with less saturated fat.
Then it'd be interesting to see a similar study, with some olive oil mixed into the oats.
VLDL, a precursor for LDL, is produced in liver. Both are more or less the same chemically, but differ in the amount of fat carried. LDL is VLDL but somewhat processed by body, HDL is a VLDL (LDL) completely processed by body.
Bile is used to process food in the gut. It does not go back into our system. Bile is still produced by liver even in long fasts.
Oatmeals is a kind of elimination diet, much like carnivore diet or rice diet. The later one also lowered cholesterol.
What oatmeal diet really does is it completely eliminates essential fatty acids in food. These fatty acids are critical in VLDL production and, thusly, oatmeal diet reduces LDL levels through less production of VLDL.
> Bile is used to process food in the gut. It does not go back into our system.
I don't think that's correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterohepatic_circulation
I also think you're mischaracterizing HDL as a VLDL. If you search for Apolipoprotein A here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK305896/ you'll see that HDL is constructed from it, while VLDL and LDL are part of the Apolipoprotein B lineage.
By that logic, it would seem that oatmeal would be best placed in a non-breakfast slot, no?
I’m genuinely curious. I have a vested interest in this.
300 grams of oatmeal a day, basically nothing else, and your LDL only goes down 10%.
Definitely shows the comparative power of medications. Statins, ezetimibe, and PCSK9 inhibitors can reduce LDL or ApoB by 85-95%.
Colestyramine basically works the same way as oatmeal, but is far stronger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colestyramine
> Statins, ezetimibe, and PCSK9 inhibitors can reduce LDL or ApoB by 85-95%
What? Absolutely not. Not even close. Provide a source if you really believe this.
40mg Rosuvastatin + 10mg ezetimibe + leqvio did this precisely for my n=1.
One source: https://www.escardio.org/communities/councils/cardiology-pra...
Specifically: “ Although our pharmaceutical armamentarium is very good at the moment (the combination of statin-ezetimibe-proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 [PCSK9] can reduce LDL cholesterol [LDL-C] levels by 85%), new drugs are emerging through the different pitfalls of current drugs.”
It seems as if some researchers think that reducing this single metric without considering any other factors is inherently always a good thing and is very important.
The oat diet was two days and the effect lasted two weeks though so it's not as bad as eating nothing but it's all the to e
the diet was just maintained for two days
Hardly “nothing else”. Two smoothies a day with 150g of oats blended in them will basically cover this. You’d still have plenty of room for other food.
But that's not what the study tested. The study showed that both calorie restriction, and calorie restriction combined with almost all calories from oats, reduced cholesterol; but that the effect was more durable for the latter case. No data was gathered on eating oats without calorie restriction in this study.
It seems more complicated than that - the "Oats only" people were only on that regime for two days, not an extended period of time.
Also the paper says that the "Oats only" people were allowed to eat other fruits and vegetables with their meals.
Full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9
I was curious what the implementation looked like:
> In the short-term intervention study, participants assigned to the oat group (OG) consumed three oat meals daily for two days instead of their habitual Western diet. Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes (Demeterhof Schwab GmbH & Co. KG, Windsbach, Germany) boiled in water. To ascertain potential long-term effects, the two-day intervention period was followed by a six-week follow-up period during which the participants returned to their habitual diet without oats. Subjects assigned to the control group (CG) consumed three standardized control meals without oats on each intervention day, which were macronutrient-adapted to the OG, instead of their habitual Western diet.
> In the six-week intervention study, participants in the oat group (OG6w) replaced one habitual meal per day with an oatmeal comprising 80 × g of rolled oat flakes (Demeterhof Schwab GmbH & Co. KG), while maintaining their habitual Western diet. Participants in the corresponding control group (CG6w) maintained their habitual Western diet and remained abstinent from oats during the six-week study period according to the inclusion criteria.
This is pretty remarkable:
> Since cholesterol levels tended to remain below baseline during the six-week, oat-free follow-up period, persistent effects on lipid metabolism might be assumed (Fig. 3d). This assumption is further supported by the high compliance observed during the follow-up period, as all participants abstained from oat consumption and returned to their habitual Western diet, with no significant differences compared to their pre-study dietary patterns (Supplementary Data 2). Thus, our results indicate clearly that a high-dose oat diet improves lipid metabolism by decreasing serum TC and LDL-C levels, even after two days, which is consistent with the known cholesterol-lowering effect of oats. In addition, beneficial effects on anthropometrics and glucose metabolism were observed within each diet group (Supplementary Data 2), which we attribute to the diet-related calorie restriction.
I gotta say though, 100 grams of oats (three times a day) is a lot. That's over a cup (dry). A typical serving is less than half that (40 grams dry).
I prefer soybeans. They have more fiber (including more soluble fiber), and they have more protein.
I realized this when tracking micronutrients with an app (tracking every gram I put into my body), and realized my 600 calorie steel-cut-oats breakfast was often outdone by soybeans I'd eat later in the day. The soybeans had more fiber.
And I think they're easier to eat. It's pretty boring, but I microwave a bowl of frozen soybeans and then just eat them plain. They're clean, you could eat them with your fingers without causing a mess (I use a spoon though), and their cleanliness means I'm comfortable having a bowl next to me at the computer or wherever; if they spill I would just pick them up with my fingers and that's it.
It looks like this study is not just about the effects from the soluble fiber in oats though, but their specific effects on the microbiome.
Doesn't soy mimic estrogene, thus causing potentially other issues?
I think that's an overblown concern that mainly applies to processed forms of soy like soy milk or tofu (I don't consume soy milk or tofu). It would be difficult to consume that much of the raw bean; we're probably talking hundreds of grams of fiber per day if you tried. I'm not certain though, do your own research.
I mean good for you for being able to eat a breakfast of plain soybeans but even if it extends my life a bit I don’t that I could do it.
Have you eaten edamame or mukimame? These strange names refer to young soy beans. You can buy them frozen. They're a pretty good snack food. I think they're the best of vegetables.
Barley is also beta glucane rich and likely has an even greater impact on glucose and insulin levels: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15930484/
I'm thinking of a menu;
Breakfast: overnight oats with milk (half and half) and a bit of yoghurt and a banana mashed in.
Lunch: Oatcakes with tahini/hummus and a salad??
Dinner: Skirlie with spinach and a couple of poached eggs on top. Along with some roast carrots/courgette/aubergine.
The eggs would be outside the OA diet I suppose. I think I might try this.
Oatmeal is amazing at stabilizing blood sugar levels. It's like adding inertia to the power grid.
If you are eating any kind of snack cracker or refined wheat product, I would suggest replacing with oats and then reporting back on results after one week.
I think the beneficial effects are strong enough to completely offset the impact of things like occasional bowl of ice cream and package of nerds gummy clusters. This is what gets me to power through. If there wasn't some kind of strong upside no one would be eating this stuff willingly.
If I eat a wheat-based breakfast (eg toast or wheat flakes), it's almost guaranteed that by 11am I'll be feeling fairly weak due to low blood sugar. Eating oats for breakfast doesn't have that effect at all.
I don't like oatmeal (porridge), but whole oats in muesli are pretty good.
How does it stabilize when it actually causes it to shoot up like crazy?
Glucose monitor disagrees.
> If there wasn't some kind of strong upside no one would be eating this stuff willingly.
Are you kidding? I love the stuff. I used to eat it daily as a kid and had gotten out of the habit, but when I had high cholesterol and my doctor told me to eat a lot of it, it was like being prescribed a treat.
How do you reconcile this with fact that oatmeal has higher glycemic index than ice cream?
Ice cream / milk has saturated fat, which is something that people who are watching their cholesterol might want to limit. Fat helps slow digestion, which is beneficial for the glycemic index. It depends on the ice cream too. Steel cut and rolled oats' glycemic load is not that bad, especially when eaten with berries, nuts, etc.
Also, using ice cream as the benchmark is misleading, as people might view it as a junk food and think that its glycemic index is higher than they otherwise would, but actually its glycemic index is low/moderate, depending on the type.
I can't imagine Chubby Hubby being low...but it's so good. All things in moderation I suppose.
Fiber in oatmeal slows absorption.
Pretty sure this whole thread is an ad.
By the powerful oat lobby?
Well… the study was partially funded by the German Cereal Processing, Milling and Starch Industries’ Association.
Big goat
Porridge? Is Oatmeal what some people call Porridge?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oatmeal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porridge
Oatmeal is a more specific term than porridge, because porridge isn’t necessarily made from oats (eg, rice in Asia).
Though in the UK, when someone says “porridge” they almost always mean oat porridge or oatmeal.
"Oatmeal" is a very confusing word to me because it's not actually "meal" (meaning "flour" in this case). There is actually a flour made out of oats, but it's not what you would make porridge out of.
Flour as you know it is not quite the same thing as meal milled at the time when the words were being invented. Wheatmeal is still a thing, look up images of it and the resemblance to oatmeal should be a lot more apparent!
I would class porridge oats as what might be called 'rolled oats' if you were buying animal feed. They are not ground, but crushed under a rolling stone. I guess they have different terms for different markets. Never seen rolled wheat, but I have seen rolled barley and oats.. they looks like porridge oats. Or is it an Atlantic divide, but with the US foodie term crossing back in the food market
But it's often the first meal of the day. :)
Bravo.
It's not often I find myself quoting Gwar, but this reminds me of "Bone meal! Better than no meal at all!"
Oat porridge (aka oatmeal, aka oatmeal porridge) is one type of porridge.
I suppose I should acknowledge there is a big world out there. If I asked for porridge in the UK I would get oat porridge. The product I bought this morning to make it was called 'porridge oats'.I suspect the Asian version comes from the age of empire with British troops applying their home terms to their rations? 'This gloopy river thing looks like Porridge'.
A porridge made of rice in the UK is not a thing as far as I am aware (I'm not in hipster London though), I suspect it would be what we call Rice Pudding?
> A porridge made of rice in the UK is not a thing.
No, for that we've adopted the name "rice pudding"
Yes.
Interesting that it doesn’t specify what type of oatmeal, e.g steel cut vs quick oats etc. I thought steel cut is more beneficial.
Rolled oats according to the paper
Thanks , I found it after clicking through to the actual nature paper, where it’s a detail buried deep down in the paper. They really should have mentioned it up front.
Working link https://web.archive.org/web/20260124061041/https://www.uni-b...
link to the paper itself: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68303-9
" Sponsorship
The trial was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Diabetes Association (DDG), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Cereal Processing, Milling and Starch Industries’ Association (VGMS), and RASO Naturprodukte."
I'd be quite suspicious of this study for this reason alone.
"They also lost two kilos in weight on average and their blood pressure fell slightly."
Two kilos in two days?
Edit: Oatmeal is great. I have some most mornings, either as porridge or letting it soak for a bit in "viscous mesophilic fermented milk", as Wikipedia suggests it can be called in english. Lots of starch but it takes a while for it to sugar the blood, and some fiber and protein.
2 kilograms is about the upper bound of the expected daily weight variability of an adult, caused by water retention and food intake. It's the difference between what you see if you weigh yourself after taking a morning dump vs. after dinner. That's why people are advised to weigh themselves at the same time every day.
(For purposes of weight loss, normies are also advised to weigh themselves weekly instead of daily, because it's easier than explaining to them what a low-pass filer is.)
2kg in 2 days doesn't sound unreasonable at all. Glycogen and water loss from the calorie restriction will do that, along with maybe better bowel regularity from the fiber. Nobody is claiming they lost 2kg of body fat.
I eat muesli every morning for breakfast. It's the best way to get oats (raw).
If switching to oatmeal, go with the unflavored raw oats. It's not bad once a person gets used to it. Substituting milk with water is also perfectly fine.
Eating a low sugar breakfast does feel pretty healthy.
I much prefer the texture of porridge made in a pan on the stove to that made in the microwave. The stirring releases the starches from the oats.
I use rolled oats and cook with just salt and water which avoids the risk of the milk burning if you are inattentive, then add milk or yoghurt (and raw brown sugar) to my bowl.
Go all in and invest in a Spurtle.
Or just use a wooden spoon upside-down?
And if you can find them: I find steel cut oats (as opposed to rolled oats) way more enjoyable for texture.
As EZ-E says above, adding a dash of healthy fat (olive oil) above does improve the mouthfeel - as well as using a little more water than you need.
As someone who grew up eating oatmeal for breakfast... that sounds really disgusting.
Don't get me wrong, to each their own, if you like it that's great, but way too liquidly oatmeal plus oil just sounds really disgusting compared to just normal oatmeal + normal amounts of water.
Ha, I guess that's the difference – I grew up eating porridge and congee. I usually find oatmeal done by my friends too gloopy.
Been trying to get into overnight oats (home made) for breakfast but its been hard to hit protein numbers, even with protein powder.
The study is suggesting two days of intense oats. You can go totally without protein for two days and barely notice it as long as you're keeping yourself full, and a big pile of oats does a surprisingly good job of that.
Once backpacking in Alaska I did oatmeal 10 days straight haha
With just the oats it's hard. What I do is ferment my own greek yogurt (milk and starter in an instant pot for 9h, then strain it in the fridge overnight) and eat that with müsli mixed in (the German kind that's nothing but whole grains and some raisins, not the garbage that's basically breakfast cereal). Tastes great and gives you a ton of slow-release energy and protein.
Adding greek yogurt thats a good idea!
I've had something similar in Iceland, good call.
Greek yogurt has a lot of protein?
Actual Greek yogurt will have 8-12% of it's weight in protein.
Another option might be curd / quark (differs a lot per country).
How much protein do you actually need though? If you're not using it immediately (i.e. shortly after exercise) it's wasted.
This is wrong, there is no proof of an anabolic window.
I use rolled soy flakes. I think they are pretty much perfect for this purpose, but unfortunately not so easy to source
A point I don't notice being made -
Try assuming that the target audience for this research is clinicians and nutritionists working with general population patients - particularly patients who really need cholesterol-reducing interventions. The medical system has limited resources; patients have limited attention spans and compliance curves. The patient may be in your ER or hospital after a medical incident, or in your clinic after a bad test result. If the hospital kitchen, a family member, or the patient himself can get through two days of this relatively easy oatmeal diet, the research say that his short-term and intermediate-term numbers should (X fingers) improve by [details]. If, two real-world days later, both a follow-up cholesterol test and (hopefully) the patient's daily symptoms and perception of his health are greatly improved - that's a clear win, both for him and for the medical system. And (hopefully) the patient's perception of the medical system - because high cholesterol is a chronic health problem, and you need him to readily seek care, show up for appointments, and comply with prescribed treatments.
I think the main thing is to understand why oatmeal works: soluble fiber and the gut bacteria feeding on the carbs.
That can be achieved within many other diets too. I wish they were more specific in saying what's special about oats, if anything.
I also get upset when I see a ton of junk options at the grocery store. They are talking about plain cut oats and whole fresh fruit, but based on the way shelves are stocked I imagine a majority of people get the kind with all the added sugar. You might as well be eating honey smacks at that point. Yogurt has the same problem at the store.
Hold on there. High fiber consumption increases the excretion of cholesterol, by reducing the reabsorption of the cholesterol in bile. The liver produces cholesterol for bile, which mixes with our food in the duodenum and aids absorption of fats. Most of this cholesterol is then re-absorbed by the small intestines. By increasing bulk, fiber reduces the amount that is re-absorbed.
Effects on but biome are real too, and apparently beneficial, and may factor in, but it isn't the only (or necessarily the primary) mechanism for reducing serum cholesterol.
Huh, but biome works here.
> You might as well be eating honey smacks at that point.
I don't see how. Adding sugar doesn't remove the fiber.
Are we talking instant oat meal here? Or something more raw like rolled or even cut oats?
I tried to get into rolled or cut but the prep time was hard to keep up with.
If you're worried about prep time, I've been taking the approach at https://www.hippressurecooking.com/pressure-cooker-oatmeal-h... of cooking steel cut oats pot-in-pot in my Instant Pot.
As a single guy, I just cook the oats in the bowl that I intend to serve them in and, since it's basically water just water in the base of the instant pot, there's not much cleaning required. The oats cook without manual intervention during the cooking process.
It takes a bit of time, but in theory you could set up your instant pot on a delay timer and wake up to freshly-cooked steel-cut oats.
Steel cut oats in the ziroshi rice cooker and you just set what time you want your porridge ready. Its magical
Rice cookers also have an option for oatmeal/porridge.
"Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes (Demeterhof Schwab GmbH & Co. KG, Windsbach, Germany) boiled in water."
That’s nothing. You should have seen me on my Halo Top ice cream only diet. One point of the ice cream, nothing else. Lost way more weight than these losers. Halo Top, guys, it’s the key.
Is that also what gave you the cancer?
No. That’s from reading your comments.
Haha just kidding.
This isn't news it's be known for decades?
Yea it’s on the oatmeal boxes even. Part of what’s interesting about this study though is they claim this two day intensive(300g per day) oatmeal diet showed microbiome changes which persist for months.
Yeah for reference 54 grams is about 200 kcal, so this is 1200 kcal or so of just oats. That leaves 600-800 kcal for other food if you’re targeting 1800-2000 kcal/day which is a reasonable calorie restriction. So this isn’t really a sustainable diet in the long term.
Two days isn't long term though.
300g of oatmeal is about 3.3 cups (US measure).
I would consider a normal bowl of oatmeal for breakfast to be about half a cup, so this is quite a bit more.
Which is why they are spreading the 300g out over an entire day, and it's the entire diet for 2 days.
The study is not suggesting this is a long-term diet. They're saying "eat oats for all your food for two days, and your cholesterol lowers by ~10% and then stays low for ~6 weeks due to changes in your gut biome".
They're not saying eat 300g for breakfast and then eat as normal. They're not saying do this every day.
They're saying 2 days, this is what you eat, spread out to replace all your meals across those 2 days, then go back to normal.
Yeah... a large (1" tall) canister of oatmeal is 1.2kg so imagine eating 2 big ass cans of oatmeal a week.
I think you are mixing up oats and oatmeal. And I think (but am not positive) that the study is referring to 300g of prepared oatmeal.
That wouldn't really make sense since amount of water could vary. Anyway the article says "Each oat meal comprised 100 × g of rolled oat flakes... boiled in water."
Oatmeal is fine, but has nothing on hulled barley.
Oats are for horses. Mankind basically co-evolved with Barley.
Barley was the preferred food for cavalry horses alongside oats since antiquity so “oats are for horses” is a medieval European quirk.
Hulled barley gives me the worst stomach ache of my life. I’m a horse I guess.
This comment actually had me 'laughing out load', haha. I've never tried Hulled Barley, and I guess now I'm put off from even trying :)
People go too hard, you really just need to drink 1 tsp ground up and boiled in a drink. It aggressively gels with water so it's best consumed like it was historically as a "small beer", with lot's of water.
> Oats are for horses
ANZAC Cookies are the greatest foods on THE PLANET
Can't win.
Aren’t Oats given to horses to fatten them up in winter? I might be wrong. Just asking . .
Given that horses regularly eat grass and hay, oats are comparatively one of the most calorie dense foods they eat.
And cats. Blursed video.
Then again, herbivores seem to... "supplement" their protein sources. So not that unexpected.
Even if they are, is that at all relevant to the topic ?
Oatmeal is food of the gods - BUT only if you don't pollute is with all sorts of add ons.
Oatmeal and milk, nothing more. No fruit no nuts no sugar no honey no sprinkles of whatever. Perfect.
The great thing about oatmeal is you can change the taste easily. Savory, sweet, spiced, aromatic, creamy, chewy, whatever you want.
My go-to is oatmeal with milk and pepper, but some days I want some aged cheddar, or smoked cheddar (mmmm!). Frozen wild blueberries/wineberries for a winter treat. Tumeric, ginger, cinnamon and honey if I'm getting sick. A fried egg and hot sauce if it's a lazy sunday.
What a bunch of fucking heathen.
Savoury oatmeal might be my wife's top-rated thing that I brought to the relationship.
Indians are great at this kind of thing. They don't really eat sweet dishes like we do. Upma is usually a wheat porridge but can be made with oats.
If you are taking out the sugar you might as well go all the way and take out the milk.
That's what I do, my son often comments that I eat gruel for breakfast.
What a lot of people don't realise is that the creamy texture comes from the oats rather than the milk.
Full fat milk is probably better because a) it will taste better and b) the fat will slow the energy release.
It’s so funny you’re being downvoted, i think it’s just an expression of how much people hate oatmeal and like milk, lol. And also you can pry my milk from my cold dead hands.
Refined sugar might offset the health benefits.
But it's your bowl of oatmeal, do what you want with it. Otherwise, what was that whole punk thing for, really?
Bah. I love putting a layer of frozen blueberries at the bottom of the bowl then layering on piping hot steel cut oats to thaw and warm them up. You’re probably right that I shouldn’t add dried cranberries and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup on top (occasionally with thinly sliced bananas) but I’m happy enough to be wrong about it. I also skip the milk.
You're missing out on up to two or three extra months of life by enjoying yourself now! I hope you think about that when you're too old to think about things!
Savory oatmeal is the way to go.
It is a shame that most people's associations with oatmeal is either "bland" or "I've added in so much sugar that I may as well ignore the benefits of oats entirely".
Why no fruits? I eat oatmeal with milk, an apple and some flaxseed each morning. I don't care about the taste but I add the apple because of vitamins. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Milk? Why the exception for that?
Civility
Oatmeal and water
*horses